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On the certainty of uncertainty and the irrationality of rationality in complex systems
82
On the Certainty of Uncertainty the Irrationality of Rationality in Complex Systems
and
HAROLD A. LINSTONE
Ian Mitroff’s provocative article on the nuclear predicament tells us much about the nature of complex sociotechnical systems in general. Elsewhere [5, 61, I have placed such ill-structured or wicked systems into the context of multiple perspectives. As Mitroff points out, no single perspective can do justice to such systems. When I first began to analyze nuclear weapon strategy in the late 1950’s (41, I was confident that I was dealing with well-structured systems. Human military factors such as morale and leadership could be safely factored out. Unlike conventional weapons and “limited war,” this type of conflict could be analyzed effectively using few variables (for example, number of weapons, circular probable error), and clever mathematical models-so it appeared. Indeed a considerable community of systems analysts kept busy inventing and massaging them. The subsequent 20 years slowly revealed to me the naivete of relying on such analytic perspective. The problems were much more subtle than assumed and multiple perspectives were absolutely essential. They may well yield contradictory conclusions, as do opposing lawyers interpreting testimony in the courtroom. Indeed, Mitroff’s mentor, Professor West Churchman, draws on Hegel to make the point in his “Philosophy for Complexity”: The mature individual is the individual who can hold conflicting world viws and act. and live, and that his or her life is enriched by that capability-not is complexity. that is really complexity!
together at the same time. weakened by it That 12. p. 901
My only problem with Mitroff is that I do not see the need to interpret the conflicting insights from different perspectives as “paradoxes.” Let us first confine ourselves to the traditional technical perspective of the systems analyst and consider a simple system: A + B, say A benefits B (in Mitroff’s words, more is more). This is shown by the digraph in Figure la. By further study (say, a more fine-grained model) we find that there is also a C in the system and that A + C -+ B, with A hurting C (more A means less C) and C reinforcing B (more C means more B, less C means less B). This last sequence implies that A hurts B. The two paths (Fig. lb) tell us that A benefits B and A hurts B (through C). So we have Mitroff’s “paradox” or
HAROLD A. LINSTONE is University Professorof Systems Science and Management and Director of the Futures Research Institute, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Address reprint requests to Dr. Harold A. Linstone, Director, Futures Research Institute, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. 0 1986 by Elsevicr Science Publishing
Co., Inc.
0040.1625/86/$03.50
COMMENTS
83
ON MITROFF
b.
B
more is more
B
more is more and more is less
B
A
feedback
Fig. 1. A Digraph Representation
contradiction that more is more and more is less. Alternatively, a negative feedback loop is discovered so that the effect on B may be oscillatory (Fig. lc). The neglect of feedback loops is, in fact, a major reason for the impression of counterintuitive system behavior. After two decades we have come to understand that nuclear weapon systems and strategy do not constitute a purely technical problem. As with other sociotechnical systems and issues, the human aspects-the social/organizational and individual/persona! perspectives-are of paramount significance. The ethical basis, the planning horizon, indeed the perception of the entire system or problem is transformed as we see it from a different perspective. Example: The technical perspective tells us that mutual assured destruction or MAD (my favorite acronym) is the official U.S. policy. It is seen in this perspective as a second strike capability. However, an organizational perspective-that of the military-informs us that this establishment has always been uncomfortable with the doctrine. If you know you are being attacked, why wait like a sitting duck rather than strike first. Down through the ages, commanders have always favored offense over defense: seizing the initiative rather than ceding it to the enemy. Permitting the United States to be destroyed by the Soviets and then retaliating is a completely unmilitary notion. The common operating premise among United States war planners, therefore, is that the United States would never permit itself to be hit first. In this context the apparent “defects” in United States retaliatory capability [in the strategic command and control portion] can be seen as a by-product of the military’s unstated reliance on the first-strike option that is always included in the SIOP. ]3, p. 731
Or listen to the distinguished
diplomat
George Ball:
Establishing themselves in monasteries such as the RAND Corporation and the Hudson Institute, [the analysts] have used game theory and higher mathematics to evolve rules by which nuclear wars are to be=fought. Although the product of their cogitations is neat and sometimes intellectually elegant, it can also be misleading. The decisions of politicians and ultimately of military commanders are never-and will never be-made in a sterile environment or dictated solely by mathematical possibilities. They will reflect the probability of overhasty, poorly calculated, responses, the pressure of alarmed and uninformed public opinion inflamed by propaganda and factual error, the fears, ambitions, frustrations, and anger of military and political leaders playing by quite different rules, acting on the basis of rumor and misinformation.
Rationality should certainly be taken as the ethical basis for the technical perspective. But that does not mean other perspectives are irrational and insane. I would suggest that an appropriate ethical basis for the personal perspective is morality. The Ten Com-
H.A. LINSTONE
84
mandments
are moral precepts for the individual. On the other hand, I see jmtice or ethical basis for an organizational perspective. Therefore I am confused by Martino’s argument that “morality is a tool of rationality” in making national choices. Once other perspectives are added, there is much less likelihood of overstressing rationality-and much greater realism. Nuclear weaponry is indeed different from other arms in that it, for the first time, makes home supietzs an endangered species. The United States and the Soviet Union are the first states in history that have the ability to end life as we know it. This fact makes the rationality assumption and probability calculus of the analyst seem reckless and irrelevant. The MAD doctrine is only meaningful if we are willing to use nuclear weapons on a large enough scale to create mass destruction. If we are not, the deterrent is a phantom force. Even if, as Martin0 postulates in his “Just War,” the order is to destroy only military targets, that order may be violated or ignored, intentionally or unintentionally, during the “fog of battle.” One therefore cannot rule out a nuclear exchange that creates a nuclear winter or other threat to all life on a sizable part of the earth.’ Slogans such as “it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” or “better dead than red” may be moral precepts for the individual, but are they still moral when a possible consequence is genetic deformation of four future generations? What is moral within the bounds of one planning horizon may be immoral within the bounds of a longer one. Placing nuclear waste in space may be moral to me as a solution to an immediate problem, but seems immoral if I consider my grandchildren. Martin0 reminds us of the triumphs of injustice in this century-the Nazis’ concentration camps, the victims of Stalin’s collectivization campaign, and so on. It is far from clear that the willingness to use our nuclear force in a good cause is justified if the result may be more genocide. Mitroff recalls John Dewey’s recognition of the illusion of the Western quest for certainty. Most people (and organizations) crave certainty+ne reason for the popularity of religions and for the claim of each to exclusivity as the one and only “true” faith.
,fuirness as a reasonable
Leaders must tulk and uct as if they ure certain while itz fact they tuke ,fur--q gumbles
(using Dror’s terminology). People (and organizations) also respect strong leaders and despise weak ones. Therefore, the leaders mwt uppeur strong even wjhile dra,t*ing bock ,from the brink.
We know the old approaches of policy and systems analysis will not do in dealing with the nuclear issue and other messes. I hope that these discussions will encourage others to grasp the nettle of such complex systems in new and practical ways. References I. Ball, George W. NCM:York Review of Books, Nov. 8, 1984, p. 5. 2. Churchman. C. West A Philosophy for Complexity. In Futures Research: New Directions. and W.H.C. Simmonds (eds.). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1977. 3. Ford, Daniel. A Reporter at Large-U.S. Command and Control. The New Yorker, April, The Button: The Pentagon’s Strategic Command and Control System. New York: Simon 1985. 4. Linstone, Harold A. An Approach to Long-Range Planning. In Planning and Forecasting Industries, J.A. Stockfisch (ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1962. 5. Linstone, Harold A. et al. The Multiple Perspective Concept. Technological Forecasting and 20(4):275-325
6. Linstone,
H.A. Linstone 1, 1985; also and Schuster, in the Defense Social Change
(1981).
Harold A. Multiple
Perspectives for Decision
Making.
New York: Elsevier,
1984.
‘I note that the concept of nuclear winter was taken seriously only 35 years after the onset of the nuclear age-and I ask myself: what aspects are we still unaware of today that will prove to have a devastating impact? This question illustrates Mitroff’s point that uncertainty cannot be eliminated.
On the Certainty of Uncertainty the Irrationality of Rationality in Complex Systems
and
HAROLD A. LINSTONE
Ian Mitroff’s provocative article on the nuclear predicament tells us much about the nature of complex sociotechnical systems in general. Elsewhere [5, 61, I have placed such ill-structured or wicked systems into the context of multiple perspectives. As Mitroff points out, no single perspective can do justice to such systems. When I first began to analyze nuclear weapon strategy in the late 1950’s (41, I was confident that I was dealing with well-structured systems. Human military factors such as morale and leadership could be safely factored out. Unlike conventional weapons and “limited war,” this type of conflict could be analyzed effectively using few variables (for example, number of weapons, circular probable error), and clever mathematical models-so it appeared. Indeed a considerable community of systems analysts kept busy inventing and massaging them. The subsequent 20 years slowly revealed to me the naivete of relying on such analytic perspective. The problems were much more subtle than assumed and multiple perspectives were absolutely essential. They may well yield contradictory conclusions, as do opposing lawyers interpreting testimony in the courtroom. Indeed, Mitroff’s mentor, Professor West Churchman, draws on Hegel to make the point in his “Philosophy for Complexity”: The mature individual is the individual who can hold conflicting world viws and act. and live, and that his or her life is enriched by that capability-not is complexity. that is really complexity!
together at the same time. weakened by it That 12. p. 901
My only problem with Mitroff is that I do not see the need to interpret the conflicting insights from different perspectives as “paradoxes.” Let us first confine ourselves to the traditional technical perspective of the systems analyst and consider a simple system: A + B, say A benefits B (in Mitroff’s words, more is more). This is shown by the digraph in Figure la. By further study (say, a more fine-grained model) we find that there is also a C in the system and that A + C -+ B, with A hurting C (more A means less C) and C reinforcing B (more C means more B, less C means less B). This last sequence implies that A hurts B. The two paths (Fig. lb) tell us that A benefits B and A hurts B (through C). So we have Mitroff’s “paradox” or
HAROLD A. LINSTONE is University Professorof Systems Science and Management and Director of the Futures Research Institute, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Address reprint requests to Dr. Harold A. Linstone, Director, Futures Research Institute, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. 0 1986 by Elsevicr Science Publishing
Co., Inc.
0040.1625/86/$03.50
COMMENTS
83
ON MITROFF
b.
B
more is more
B
more is more and more is less
B
A
feedback
Fig. 1. A Digraph Representation
contradiction that more is more and more is less. Alternatively, a negative feedback loop is discovered so that the effect on B may be oscillatory (Fig. lc). The neglect of feedback loops is, in fact, a major reason for the impression of counterintuitive system behavior. After two decades we have come to understand that nuclear weapon systems and strategy do not constitute a purely technical problem. As with other sociotechnical systems and issues, the human aspects-the social/organizational and individual/persona! perspectives-are of paramount significance. The ethical basis, the planning horizon, indeed the perception of the entire system or problem is transformed as we see it from a different perspective. Example: The technical perspective tells us that mutual assured destruction or MAD (my favorite acronym) is the official U.S. policy. It is seen in this perspective as a second strike capability. However, an organizational perspective-that of the military-informs us that this establishment has always been uncomfortable with the doctrine. If you know you are being attacked, why wait like a sitting duck rather than strike first. Down through the ages, commanders have always favored offense over defense: seizing the initiative rather than ceding it to the enemy. Permitting the United States to be destroyed by the Soviets and then retaliating is a completely unmilitary notion. The common operating premise among United States war planners, therefore, is that the United States would never permit itself to be hit first. In this context the apparent “defects” in United States retaliatory capability [in the strategic command and control portion] can be seen as a by-product of the military’s unstated reliance on the first-strike option that is always included in the SIOP. ]3, p. 731
Or listen to the distinguished
diplomat
George Ball:
Establishing themselves in monasteries such as the RAND Corporation and the Hudson Institute, [the analysts] have used game theory and higher mathematics to evolve rules by which nuclear wars are to be=fought. Although the product of their cogitations is neat and sometimes intellectually elegant, it can also be misleading. The decisions of politicians and ultimately of military commanders are never-and will never be-made in a sterile environment or dictated solely by mathematical possibilities. They will reflect the probability of overhasty, poorly calculated, responses, the pressure of alarmed and uninformed public opinion inflamed by propaganda and factual error, the fears, ambitions, frustrations, and anger of military and political leaders playing by quite different rules, acting on the basis of rumor and misinformation.
Rationality should certainly be taken as the ethical basis for the technical perspective. But that does not mean other perspectives are irrational and insane. I would suggest that an appropriate ethical basis for the personal perspective is morality. The Ten Com-
H.A. LINSTONE
84
mandments
are moral precepts for the individual. On the other hand, I see jmtice or ethical basis for an organizational perspective. Therefore I am confused by Martino’s argument that “morality is a tool of rationality” in making national choices. Once other perspectives are added, there is much less likelihood of overstressing rationality-and much greater realism. Nuclear weaponry is indeed different from other arms in that it, for the first time, makes home supietzs an endangered species. The United States and the Soviet Union are the first states in history that have the ability to end life as we know it. This fact makes the rationality assumption and probability calculus of the analyst seem reckless and irrelevant. The MAD doctrine is only meaningful if we are willing to use nuclear weapons on a large enough scale to create mass destruction. If we are not, the deterrent is a phantom force. Even if, as Martin0 postulates in his “Just War,” the order is to destroy only military targets, that order may be violated or ignored, intentionally or unintentionally, during the “fog of battle.” One therefore cannot rule out a nuclear exchange that creates a nuclear winter or other threat to all life on a sizable part of the earth.’ Slogans such as “it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” or “better dead than red” may be moral precepts for the individual, but are they still moral when a possible consequence is genetic deformation of four future generations? What is moral within the bounds of one planning horizon may be immoral within the bounds of a longer one. Placing nuclear waste in space may be moral to me as a solution to an immediate problem, but seems immoral if I consider my grandchildren. Martin0 reminds us of the triumphs of injustice in this century-the Nazis’ concentration camps, the victims of Stalin’s collectivization campaign, and so on. It is far from clear that the willingness to use our nuclear force in a good cause is justified if the result may be more genocide. Mitroff recalls John Dewey’s recognition of the illusion of the Western quest for certainty. Most people (and organizations) crave certainty+ne reason for the popularity of religions and for the claim of each to exclusivity as the one and only “true” faith.
,fuirness as a reasonable
Leaders must tulk and uct as if they ure certain while itz fact they tuke ,fur--q gumbles
(using Dror’s terminology). People (and organizations) also respect strong leaders and despise weak ones. Therefore, the leaders mwt uppeur strong even wjhile dra,t*ing bock ,from the brink.
We know the old approaches of policy and systems analysis will not do in dealing with the nuclear issue and other messes. I hope that these discussions will encourage others to grasp the nettle of such complex systems in new and practical ways. References I. Ball, George W. NCM:York Review of Books, Nov. 8, 1984, p. 5. 2. Churchman. C. West A Philosophy for Complexity. In Futures Research: New Directions. and W.H.C. Simmonds (eds.). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1977. 3. Ford, Daniel. A Reporter at Large-U.S. Command and Control. The New Yorker, April, The Button: The Pentagon’s Strategic Command and Control System. New York: Simon 1985. 4. Linstone, Harold A. An Approach to Long-Range Planning. In Planning and Forecasting Industries, J.A. Stockfisch (ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1962. 5. Linstone, Harold A. et al. The Multiple Perspective Concept. Technological Forecasting and 20(4):275-325
6. Linstone,
H.A. Linstone 1, 1985; also and Schuster, in the Defense Social Change
(1981).
Harold A. Multiple
Perspectives for Decision
Making.
New York: Elsevier,
1984.
‘I note that the concept of nuclear winter was taken seriously only 35 years after the onset of the nuclear age-and I ask myself: what aspects are we still unaware of today that will prove to have a devastating impact? This question illustrates Mitroff’s point that uncertainty cannot be eliminated.